Tuesday, April 19, 2011

""If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain" (1 Cor 15:14-15). The Christian faith stands or falls with the truth of the testimony that Christ is risen from the dead. If this were taken away, it would still be possible to piece together from the Christian tradition a series of interesting ideas about God and men, about man's being and his obligations, a kind of religious world view: but the Christian faith itself would be dead. Jesus would no longer be a criterion: the only criterion left would be our own judgment in selecting from His heritage what strikes us as helpful. In other words, we would be alone. Our own judgment would be in the highest instance. Only if Jesus is risen has anything really new occurred that changes the world and the situation of mankind. Then He becomes the criterion on which we can rely. For then God has truly revealed himself."Benedict XVI

"The 'event' does not indicate merely something that happened and with which it all started, but what awakens the present, defines the present, gives content to the present. What we know or what we have becomes experience if what we know or have is something that is given to us now-there is a hand that offers it to us now, there is a face that comes forward now, there is blood that flows now, there is a resurrection that happenes now. Nothing exists outside this 'now'! Our 'I' cannot be moved, aroused, that is, changed, if not by something contemporaneous - an event. Christ is something that is happening to me. Now, in order that we know - Christ, the whole question of Christ - be an experience, there has to be a present that provokes us and arouses us. It is a presence as it was a presence for Andrew and John. Christianity, Christ, is exactly what He was for Andrew and John when they followed him. Imagine when He turned around, how they were struck! And when they went home with Him...It has been just like this up to now, up to this moment."Luigi Giussani

As for many years, this Good Friday hundreds of people around the world will walk through the hearts of their cities commemorating our Lord's passion and death in Ways of the Cross organized by the lay Catholic Movement Communion and Liberation.Millions of people carry their daily cross, but most of the time they are dreadfully alone: if God exists, He has nothing to do with their daily life. This is the real cross of every day, the cross of a person abandoned to himself, to his innermost need for genuine love, truth, beauty and justice. We need the presence of “God with us”, Jesus every day. And Jesus, because of the sacrifice of His cross and His resurrection, dwells among us, every day.

The Way of the Cross wants to help us follow Jesus and fix our gaze on the event of His passion in preparation for the joyous celebration of His resurrection.

In the United States, Ways of the Cross will be held in the following cities: Boston, Broomfield, CO, Chicago, Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Montgomery, AL, New Bedford, MA, New York City, Oklahoma City, Rochester, MN, Sacramento, Salem, OR, San Joseph, MO, San Diego, St. Louis, Washington,D.C.

For more information on locations and times visit the website www.clonline.us

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"THE REDEEMER OF MAN, Jesus Christ, is the centre of the universe and of history."

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Is there suffering upon this new earth? On our earth we can only love with suffering and through suffering. We cannot love otherwise, and we know of no other sort of love. I want suffering in order to love. (Dostoevsky)